By IANS
Srinagar : Moderate Hurriyat Conference chief Mirwaiz Umer Farooq has said considering the ongoing dialogue process between India and Pakistan on Jammu and Kashmir, New Delhi should not lay focus on the state assembly elections, slated in 2008.
"Those elections are not relevant. It would be an example of the bureaucratic approach to the vexed Kashmir problem if New Delhi continued laying emphasis on the elections here," Umer said while speaking at a seminar here Sunday in connection with the death anniversary of his father late Mirwaiz Molvi Muhammad Farooq.
He also said the world had moved from the days of independence to interdependence where every country favoured dialogue and negotiations.
"India and Pakistan must de-link the resolution of the Kashmir dispute from what is happening in their countries. They must not make the dialogue process subservient to a bomb blast either in Karachi or Mumbai," he said.
"The youth who had resorted to the use of guns would readily join the dialogue process provided they were given a genuine chance to do so," the Mirwaiz added.
These remarks, political analysts here argue, assume significance because of the general notion that the moderate Hurriyat group had been toying with the idea of participating in the forthcoming state assembly elections.
"The Mirwaiz wants India and Pakistan to move beyond the limitations and exigencies of an assembly election," said a political analyst here.
The moderate Hurriyat group is observing the death anniversaries of Mirwaiz Molvi Muhammad Farooq and Abdul Gani Lone, chairman of the separatist People's Conference Monday.
Unidentified gunmen assassinated Molvi Muhammad Farooq here on May 21, 1990, while Lone was killed on May 21, 2002, as he was attending the 12th death anniversary of the late Mirwaiz in downtown Srinagar.